Yemen: America’s Shame

The ridiculous truth is that the imposition of a travel ban on Yemen – in addition
to six other countries – has evoked more anguish than America’s major role
in making that country unlivable. Here’s
a very sad story about the plight of a young Yemeni girl who is being blocked
from entering the US – but where is the outrage about what’s being done to her
homeland with our tax dollars and in our name?

And make no mistake: the Saudi invasion of Yemen on behalf of a “government”
that has no popular support and was kicked out of office
by its disgusted citizens is one of the worst atrocities in recent history.
More than 25,000
have died, many more have been grievously wounded, and the country is being
swept by famine.
The result has been the empowerment of America’s worst enemies – and by that
I mean not just al-Qaeda.

Yemen has been in turmoil since the end of the cold war, with a
many-sided civil war making normal life nearly impossible. Yet things have
gotten much worse since the 2015 Saudi invasion, which aims at installing a
puppet government and crushing the Houthi
insurgency in the north. The Saudis and Yemeni government troops have generally
ignored
al-Qaeda, which controls a swathe of territory in the southeast, instead
concentrating their efforts on bombing civilians in Houthi areas.

The Houthis are adherents of the Zaydi faith,
a dissident sect of Islam, often likened to the Shi’ites – a facile comparison,
since there are significant theological differences. They have long maintained
their autonomy in the face of successive (and notoriously unstable) central
governments, but were pushed to the brink when the Saudis sent in Sunni fundamentalist
preachers who challenged the authority of local religious and tribal authorities.
This led to the rise of the “Believing
Youth,” a Zaydi revivalist group that eventually coalesced into a military
force.

As the so-called Arab Awakening swept through the Middle East, destabilizing
longstanding governments, Yemen was no exception: massive demonstrations eventually
forced President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who had reigned as undisputed despot for
thirty years, to resign in favor of his Vice President, Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi – whose “election” in 2012 was made possible by the fact
that he was the only candidate.

Yet this did not appease the various tribal and factional groups that had been
unleashed by the end of Saleh’s rule: it only emboldened them. It wasn’t long
before Hadi, too, was driven out of office, and forced to flee: the Houthis
took over the capital, Sana’a, and declared the establishment of a “Revolutionary
Committee.” Hadi fled to Aden, while the former President Saleh denounced him
and demanded that he go into exile: troops still loyal to Saleh allied with
the Houthis.

In 2015, the Saudis invaded, declaring their support for Hadi and bombing Sana’a
and the Houthi strongholds in the north. Hadi and his Saudi masters say that
the Houthis are being funded and trained by Iran and Hezbollah, but in the past
US government officials have been dubious about
this claim.

Hadi has received unconditional support from Washington in spite
of his inability to either control the country or confront the growing influence
of al-Qaeda. Last week, the US launched
an attack on an al-Qaeda redoubt, killing a number of civilians – including
the young daughter of US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, who was himself killed by
the US along with his teenage son in 2011. One US soldier was killed, and three
were injured.

The irony here is that the Houthis are militant opponents of the Sunni supremacist
al-Qaeda, and are the only military formation indigenous to the country capable
of confronting and defeating them. Yet the US is aiding the Saudis and the Hadi
regime in their merciless war against the Houthis and allied tribes, while al-Qaeda
continues to make gains.

All of which raises a larger issue: the US-Saudi relationship under President
Donald Trump. Despite a recent conversation
between the Saudi king and the President, Trump has never said a good word about
the Kingdom or its rulers. He vocally
supported the campaign to release the famous “28 pages” of a joint congressional
report on the role of foreign governments in aiding the 9/11 hijackers, which
exposed the part played by Saudi officials in facilitating the attack. Indeed,
fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers were Saudi citizens. Highlighting the
danger posed by “radical Islamic terrorism” was a major theme of Trump’s presidential
campaign, and it continues to be the overarching theme of his administration.
The Saudis have long been the main perpetrators of this ideology, funding radical
mosques and their demagogic imams, and setting up madrassas that spread the
doctrines that energize al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.

In trying to imagine what Trump’s policy toward the Saudis will be, I’m reminded
of a passage from a recent
essay by Branko Milanovic, a visiting
professor at City University of New York’s Graduate Center, in which he wrote:

“The Western elites
treat Trump as they would treat a tiger with whom they are unwillingly locked
in a cage: they try to be friendly to the tiger hoping to avoid being eaten,
but they hope that the tiger would soon be taken out of the cage.”

This applies to the Middle Eastern elites as well. The Saudis hope to deploy
Trump as a battering ram against their Iranian archrivals, but the fear is that
they will also be battered in the process. Riyadh is quite justified in this
fear. The Saudi foreign minister has decried the seven-nation travel ban as
“very
very dangerous,” in part because it applies to Sudan, one of their allies
in the Yemen war, and in part because, if applied across the board, it could
very well wind up being applied to them.

Trump’s foreign policy predilections are fraught with contradictions: on the
one hand, he’s a critic of the decision by the Bush administration to invade
and occupy Iraq, but on the other hand he claims we left “too soon.” He inveighs
against the Obama administration’s efforts to overthrow Syrian strongman Bashar
al-Assad, and his National Security advisor, Mike Flynn, was fired from his
post as head of Obama’s Defense Intelligence Agency for his criticism of our
Syrian policy. And yet Flynn – and Trump – are also hot under the collar about
the alleged growth of Iranian influence in the region, denouncing the Iran deal
to limit their nuclear program as a “bad deal”(while saying they wouldn’t ditch
it). Yet the Iranians have been fighting ISIS alongside the Iraqis, who are,
in turn, our allies – at least they
were our allies, until the Trump administration barred Iraqi nationals
from the US for three months.

Another contradiction is Trump’s often-stated
desire to repair relations with Russia, and even to enlist their help in eradicating
ISIS. Yet the Russians are in cahoots with the Iranians in Syria, and have defended
Tehran against American attempts to strong-arm them. The present balance of
forces in the Middle East pits the Saudis and their Sunni allies against Iran,
Syria, and, standing behind them, Russia, with Turkey (moving away from Washington)
and Egypt standing on the sidelines.

A Trumpian rapprochement with Moscow would mean a seismic shift in the delicate
balance of Middle Eastern forces – away from the Sunni-centric policy that motivated
our support for Syria’s Islamist “rebels” and our appeasement of Riyadh.

As this shift takes place, a reconsideration
of our policy in Yemen is an absolute necessity – on strategic and moral
grounds. Washington’s support for the Saudi Kingdom’s vicious war in Yemen is
unconscionable. The Saudis have been committing war crimes
with impunity – and with our help. How is it in America’s interests to reduce
Yemen, one of the poorest nations on
earth, to a pile of rubble? How does it serve us to give unconditional support
to Saudi Arabia, a country that has birthed more terrorists than any other in
the Muslim world?

Is that putting “America first,” or is it putting
the Saudis first?

NOTES IN THE MARGIN

You can check out my Twitter feed by going here. But please note that my tweets
are sometimes deliberately provocative, often made in jest, and largely consist
of me thinking out loud.

Author: Justin Raimondo

Justin Raimondo is the editorial director of Antiwar.com, and a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute. He is a contributing editor at The American Conservative, and writes a monthly column for Chronicles. He is the author of Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement [Center for Libertarian Studies, 1993; Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2000], and An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard [Prometheus Books, 2000].

“The irony here is that the Houthis are militant opponents of the Sunni supremacist al-Qaeda, and are the only military formation indigenous to the country capable of confronting and defeating them.”

There is no irony here.

When are you ever going to get it, Raimondo? The US is AQ, ISIS et al.

Justin Raimondo

If “the US is AQ, ISIS et al.” then why did we just lose one soldier and see three others injured attacking al-Qaeda’s redoubt in Yemen?

WinstonSmithy

Was that redoubt guarded by men recruited by the CIA on missions “so secret they cannot be disclosed”, armed with US supplied weapons “left behind by retreating Iraqis”, funded by “Pentagon funds that can’t be accounted for or pallets of cash dropped off in the desert”? The idea of the DOD fighting the State Dept. and/or the CIA in this region is one that has actually been broached on the pages of this site.

I imagine the Yemen attack was was done by the Pentagon on autopilot/from the Obama days. Trump should have put a stop on day 1 to all military operations pending review. Hopefully his administration will get enough flack about killing the American girl that he’ll think twice next time. No doubt the corrupt media will be all over this, while they happily ignored Obama’s record as a great killer.

It’ll be interesting to see if Trump can develop a consistent policy, but who knows what forces are at work there. The anti-Iran stuff is so moronic it can only come from the hopelessly dumb Republican party. Perhaps we’ll have to settle for a semi-reasonable policy which is a start and much better than the lunacy of the Clinton/Bush/Obama regime.

Oh sure, they did buy their plane tickets. So they couldn’t be hijackers, could they? Just victims of some bizarre conspiracy which goofballs here never bother to articulate. Better to stew in the paranoia sauce…

Well, some of us tried to warn you and your readers. You have a man in trump whose close advisor is trying to bring about a worldwide conflict in the belief that it is inevitable anyway (bannon). A man whose mind is screwed up from the abuse of Tenuate Dospan and Phentermine. A man who repeatedly CONNED people out of their money (the bogus Trump U and not paying contractors). This is the guy you placed (and are still placing!) your hopes in. A man who freely talks about wishing he could strip citizenship from flag-burners and who asks why nukes aren’t used.

You owe all of us a big apology. And you owe it to, in bannon’s words, just shut up and listen for a while.
We knew better than you. And the US is in deep trouble. Watch and see.

richard vajs

Terry,
You keep good company – Nancy Pelosi has just determined that Yemen’s destruction should also be blamed on Trump. This guy is magical – responsible for decades of evil in just two weeks. And when did we invade Iraq and bomb Libya – was that last week or the week before?
You are right in your observation; “the US is in deep trouble” – been that way since long before Trump came along.

TerryTheBoxer

” – Nancy Pelosi has just determined that Yemen’s destruction should also be blamed on Trump”
‘also’? You are claiming I typed something which I clearly did not, either explicitly or implicitly.
That’s plain dishonest.

richard vajs

Actually, It is Ms Pelosi who claims that Yemen’s destruction should also be blamed on Trump; Ms Pelosi and the rest of DNC not being content with just blaming Trump for “turning the World against us”, along with his other crimes of over-counting crowd size, and disappointing thousands of young women whose hearts were set on making a $100K a year being a staff member for Hillary. You listed your own list of his crimes, which I didn’t question – mainly because I have no idea what Tenuate Dosplan, etc. is which you claim he has screwed up his brain with. I do understand that Trump is a teetotaler. I didn’t vote for him (or Ms Dirtbag), but I see no reason to join the lynch mob yet.

Justin Raimondo

I stopped reading when I got to “A man whose mind is screwed up from the abuse of Tenuate Dospan and Phentermine”.

TerryTheBoxer

So you read the part about Steve Bannon. Let’s explore him a little more then.

In dozens of hours of audio recordings reviewed by USA TODAY of his Breitbart News Daily radio show in 2015 and 2016, Bannon told his listeners that the United States and the Western world are engaged in a “global existential war,” (1) and he entertained claims that a “fifth column” of Islamist sympathizers had infiltrated the U.S. government and news media. Those recordings, preserved online, offer an often unfiltered window into the thinking of Trump’s interview-averse senior adviser.

“We’re going to war in the South China Sea in five to 10 years, aren’t we?” he said in March 2016. “There’s no doubt about that. They’re taking their sandbars and making basically stationary aircraft carriers and putting missiles on those. They come here to the United States in front of our face — and you understand how important face is — and say it’s an ancient territorial sea.”
(And trump’s drug use has been known about since the 80s. He certainly checks all the boxes for it.)

Justin Raimondo

You’re citing the USA Today article, which may or may not be taking Bannon’s remarks out of context. Get back to me when you listen to the actual podcast, as I certainly intend to do. But the point is, as I stated above quite clearly, that there are contradictions inherent in Trump’s worldview. I realize now is not a time conducive to nuance, but there you have it. No one said Trump is the second coming of Gandhi, but neither is he Hitler, as you and your ilk would have it. I’ve reported what Trump and his supporters have said, now it’s time to sit back and see what they actually do. We are now in Week 2: not enough time to evaluate.

prokyssencho

Everybody at the top is lost They have a dead cadaver of a big whale , big enough to keep them afloat that’s what they are doing Why try anything else and risk drowning from the blast of the putrid gas emanating from the dead whale. It is very important for them to keep the dead whale”alive’ as long as possible

TerryTheBoxer

1) They weren’t taken out of context. He was speaking to ultra-neocon Frank Gaffney.

2) I never called trump hitler. I have called him a would-be authoritarian. And bannon has freely made common cause with fascist white nationalists (that IS what the alt-right is), whatever his personal views might really be.

3) Flynn just put Iran “on notice” today. There are also reports Trump threatened military action on the phone to Enrique Peña Nieto,

Threatening Mexico with military action? I don’t know whether to laugh or what. Trump would be Santa Anna in reverse. Mexico would end up with Texas back and would probably overthrow California for good measure lol

bob balkas

True, a good part of America is with Trump on at least some issues; most likely with Trump on most steps he promised to do; so, we cannot call them anti-american, crazy, deluded, dictatorial…

John Dowser

“Hadi and his Saudi masters say that
the Houthis are being funded and trained by Iran and Hezbollah”

That seems quite likely though. Who else would be funding and fueling the other side of the conflict? Armed struggle is very expensive. Iran would be very interested in getting a foothold in Yemen. The Saudi government (and Western intelligence agencies) might have a few valid reasons in complaining about Iranian “destabilizing” influences in the region. It’s hard to get quickly to any facts here but it seems very likely to me that Iran & Hezbollah have similar aims in Iraq as they have in Yemen. It’s all quite important geostrategically for them. The question of course being which influence is more in line with the interest of Yemen itself.

John Dowser

Oops. With “similar aims in Iraq” I really meant Syria. But if it came to it, Iraq would be certainly part of the same strategy.

Justin Raimondo

The Yemeni government submitted a dossier to Washington supposedly “proving” Iranian covert operations, but Washington seemed unimpressed. The Houthis are *not* Shi’ites, as is commonly assumed, and there are major theological differences with the Zaydi doctrine, which is another reason why Tehran is unlikely to be behind the rebellion, which has been ongoing for decades.

It’s hilarious (and will get funny with each passing day) to watch Raimondo excusing and apologizing on Trumps behalf.
The mental gymnastics required for this would make Conway jealous & Spicer seem tame.

Justin Raimondo

It’s quite obvious you never even bothered to read the article above, which has plenty of criticism of Trump and his administration. But that’s typical of the brainless NeverTrumpers – and their mirror images, the brainless pro-Trumpers – who are so mired in their tribal mindset that their ability to read let alone understand what they read is impaired. Sad!

dieter heymann

I agree that your analysis is balanced. Where I disagree with you is on predicting what a US-Russian rapprochement might mean for the Middle East because there are no safe predictions for that region. None.

longlance

Every US President puts Saudi Arabia first. Well, first behind Israel.

The amount of triangulation going on in US foreign policy is breathtaking. We, and it’s hard to even know who that is these days, have been supporting, arming, and training both sides in Middle East conflicts for decades, all to destabilize the entire region. Yemen is the perfect example of this. Syria is, too. The Israelis, CIA/Mossad, and the treacherous Neocons have been having a field day all under the cloak of secrecy.

To get to the bottom of this mess we first need to lance the boil that is 9/11 and send all of the real perps off to the Hague or better yet, strung up on lamp posts by the hundreds. Maybe Trump, when the Neocons and Zionist finally turn on him, will play his strongest card… the TRUTH about 9/11. If he does, all hell will break loose. Black swans they will be aflyin’.

richard vajs

Thomas Carlson, You are very correct; as Thoreau first put it – everyone wants to hack at the branches; no-one goes for the roots. A few hints are showing -1. a bill was introduced in the Senate making it a criminal offense to link Israel with 9-11 – now, why the Hell was that necessary?; 2. Iran is officially put on “notice” (i.e. we are thinking of attacking you for launching a missile test, something we and Israel do regularly.
Strange, that these actions come along just now, while Israel puts the further genocide of the Palestinians and theft of their land, into higher gear. Great timing, but then they have had a lot of practice doing this.

“a bill was introduced in the Senate making it a criminal offense to link Israel with 9-11”

Tell me more. Sounds like something we’d have heard about before now.

Thomas Carlson

The clown car of venal hypocrites that we call the Congress have always been good at carrying water for the deep state Powers That Be.

bob balkas

I am of a general conclusion and often with factuality that no matter how bad a government is, its people are often a lot better off with it than w.o. any government.
Does Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Yugoslavia and now Yemen prove it?

We can also now understand what Saddam, Najibullah, Assad, Gaddafi had to do to prevent various imams and mullahs from ascending to power.

My advice to Trump, Putin, and Khamenei is to stay out of Iraq, but not yet out of Syria because most Isil fighters are invaders and also declared terrorists even by US.
We gotta learn to stay out of these inter-religious and intra-religious warfare, hate anger, lust for blood, deep ignorance, misogyny/etc.
Our warfare, i expect, will not change any of that for better. Of course, that goes also for US; nothing better for US comes out of their own warfare, hate, anger, illusion of grandeur, misogyny, etc.

bob balkas

Praise be to Trump for talking with Putin and for asking Pentagon to come up with an accurate and adequate map of the safe zones for people fleeing war zones.
It looks that Russia has not rejected DT’s proposal out of hand if Assad accepts such areas.
So we now await Pentagon’s plans, justification; projection of benefits to all Syrians, world peoples, accruing from safe zones, etc., and what Damascus says.
On principle, i am all for it. I too was taken to safe zone from Dalmatia to Sinai early ’44, because the threat of famine and coming offensives of the Partizani against Germans.
Btw, my dad was also a Partizan as was my town of about 16k people; which lost 1k youths in the civil and international war of Yugoslavia ’41-’45.

geokat62

Justin R – “Is that putting ‘America first,’ or is it putting the Saudis first?”

The other day it was Syria first. Today it’s Saudis first. There is only one country whose interests are put ahead of America’s and you know it.

Have you ever heard of Syrian-firsters or Saudi-firsters dominating US foreign policy?

The script has been written and it goes like this:

Act I – Attack the Sunnis of the ME
ACT II- take a Sunni turn
Act III – pit the Shia (led by Iran) against the Sunnis (led by KSA) in a 100 years war (preferably longer)

And here’s the coup de grace: pitch this as a GWOT meant to protect the average American, but its real purpose is to enhance the security of the villa in the jungle, and pay for it with US taxpayer dollars ($6 trillion and counting):

Israel’s enthusiasm for war eventually led some of its allies in America to tell Israeli officials to damp down their hawkish rhetoric, lest the war look like it was being fought for Israel. In the fall of 2002, for example, a group of American political consultants known as the Israel Project circulated a six-page memorandum to key Israelis and pro-Israel leaders in the United States. The memo was titled “Talking about Iraq” and was intended as a guide for public statements about the war. “If your goal is regime change, you must be much more careful with your language because of the potential backlash. You do not want Americans to believe that the war on Iraq is being waged to protect Israel rather than to protect America.” – Mearsheimer and Walt, The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy

muggles

Yes, the horrible state of the non-nation of Yemen continues. Trump has been suckered into this one. Since and even before WWII the Brits had a major naval base in Aden and supported one of the two “governments” in Yemen.
During the Cold War this morphed into a US matter, partly, with Saudis and Egyptians entering the fray. Yemenis make the Afghans look peaceful.
So why are US soldiers dying there? Beats me. Saudi headchoppers need something to divert their restive population from their decaying economy. Blame Shiias from Iran, of course. The Saudis have long wanted to grab Yemen just to expand their Kingdom. Yemenis are ethnically different from Saudis (and each other) so this is the classic quagmire.
It is highly probable that whatever “side” we are supporting, it is the worst one.

The first half, maybe. I still found it profoundly disappointing. No mention of “safe zones” and only a brief gloss over poor little dead Nora with no mention of Trump’s roll in that crime. Just disappointing.

Unhiddenness

‘Trump registered eight companies in Saudi Arabia during campaign’

The chances of Trump (or anyone in DC) doing anything about the Saudis is essentially nil until the Saudi money poisoning the planet is either banned, or simply dries up.

Frayed_Thread

I wonder why the U.S. just doesn’t give the Fraudis the heave-ho. Between them and the Israelis they must own 90% of the think-thanks.

Re the tiger, w/apologies to TS Eliot:
“
..In the juvescense of the year
Came Trump the tiger
…..
The tiger springs in the new year. Us he devours
“

I liked the first half before Justin devolved into more delusional Trump apologia. I especially enjoyed how he danced around last week-end’s war crime in Yemen without mentioning that Trump signed off on it, making him complicit in an act of barbarism that would have seen him hung at Nuremberg. He also failed to mention his support for a US-Saudi governed “safe zone” in Yemen. This shit is beginning to become unbearable. I keep hoping that Justin will come back to his senses and snap out of it but if the stench of 57 dead bodies can’t wake him, I fear we may have lost him for good. The most maddening thing about it is every once in awhile he still writes a solidly brilliant piece. The old Justin is still down in there somewhere. Maybe I should go old school Catholic a call up an exorcist.

I thought the piece was something of an advancement on the Trump front. As heavily invested as he got in Trump — pretty much the political equivalent of a goddamn Moonie — it’s probably going to take some time for him to completely stop swilling the Kool Aid and fully understand how badly he let himself get conned. Give him some time.

JimBass56

‘goddamn Moonie’……’swilling the Kool Aid’…….you’re the moderator for his columns? Why? ‘Give him some time’…? Who died at Antiwar and left you arbiter of correct thought?

No, I am not “the moderator for his columns.” I’m the moderator for comments at Antiwar.com. There’s a difference.

In addition to being a comments moderator, I am also a commenter. I have opinions, and I express those opinions. You don’t have to like my opinions or that I express them. I’ll have them and express them whether you like it or not.

I hope your right. I miss him. I wouldn’t get this pissed if I didn’t. The whole thing in Yemen has got me pretty tore up too. I’m trying to work with Angela to get something I wrote on it published somewhere.

You are a bit out of your league here. The Houthis, not a popular uprising, deposed the president of Yemen. It was a coup, back in January 2015. Secondly, you say that Al Q and the Houthis are ‘opposed’ to one another–not so clear, that. Enemy of my enemy. They work are in cahoots, and ISIS has a foot in the door there as well. Also, you forget that the Saudis are under a shower of ballistic missiles being lobbied over the border. There have been many Saudi deaths. The Saudis are not on a killing spree, they have anxiety about Iranian influence on their border (the Houthis are allied with them). They are also the ones doling out most of the humanitarian aid. I am not an apologist for the Saudi regime. But fair is fair

bob balkas

I do not know enough about what went on and is now going on in Yemen but, i can, nevertheless, say that even a bad government is often a lot better for most people than with no government.
One good example of such a case is Ukraine.

willem

Good article, but I’m still left trying to figure out why the US believes it even has a horse in this race. Can you recommend any further reading that might suggest why we are even involved?

Unwelcome Guest

The only horse I can see that the US has in the race is money. The US has specialised in weaponry for the last half century or so. Thus if it needs cash it has to sell weapons and associated services to people who want them.

I agree that the US should not intervene in foreign disputes — except perhaps to profit from them by arming both sides. That is, after all, how the Rothschilds got to be so wealthy :-) Really!! the last statement is FAKE news, but you bought is didn’t you??

Anyway, we really should stay out of foreign conflicts. Cause when we do get involved, so many innocent people die, and when we are not involved, why there are hardly any civilian deaths. Look at how well this turned outhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_genocide

And I bet you can find a lot more examples of wars where the US was not involved and there were hardly any civilian casualties. consider the conflict between India and Pakistan. Or Sri Lanka civil war where only 50 to 100K civilians were killed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Lankan_Civil_War

But again, we are the source of all evil, and should stay out, cause when we do things are better.